Facebook’s most viewed article was on COVID vaccine death, says firm amid reports of withholding info

A Facebook post about a “healthy” doctor dying two weeks after taking the COVID-19 vaccine was the “most viewed content” on its platform in the first three months of 2021, the social media giant said in its transparency report.

The content reportedly attracted nearly 54 million views.

This information was part of Facebook’s first-quarter content transparency report that was released on Saturday—initially believed to be shelved.

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The tech giant released the report after the New York Times claimed that the executives at the social media firm held back from sharing it with the public as it would “look bad for the company”.

However, countering the claims, Facebook’s Policy Communications Manager Andy Stone took to Twitter to issue a clarification.

“We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favourable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look — and making note of some of the components of the story.” “News outlets wrote about the south Florida doctor that died. When the coroner released a cause of death, the Chicago Tribune appended an update to its original story; NYTimes did not. Would it have been right to remove the Times story because it was COVID misinformation?” he tweeted.

He said the reason the report wasn’t released earlier "because there were key fixes to the system we wanted to make.”

The story was initially published by the South Florida Sun Sentinel which was later reposted by the Chicago Tribune.

The report revealed that a doctor in Miami died two weeks after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, calling it “possibly the nation’s first death linked to the vaccine.”

The story was then updated stating that the doctor died from a condition that causes internal bleeding, but a medical examiner's report couldn't rule out whether the vaccine was the key factor.

Facebook and other social media companies have been criticised for how they handle the spread of misinformation on their platforms.

(With inputs from agencies)